Curious Minds at Work

Who are you? It’s a question you’ve had to answer if you’ve ever moved, changed jobs, or started a new relationship. And it’s natural that who you are will change with each new experience you gain and new memories you form. The “story of you” will be different. At the same time, our brain is an incredible editor. With limited storage space for memories, it’s got to pick and choose. It does that by connecting the dots between them to give us the stories we tell about ourselves. In other words, who we are is who we say we are. It’s informed by our past, our present, and predictions we make about our future. That’s both tremendously freeing and just a little bit scary. At any moment, we’re not one self, we’re many selves. And that self is constructed. By us. Gregory Berns walks us through all of this and more in his latest book, The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent – and Reinvent – Our Identities. He points out that we are, by nature, storytellers, and he shares ways to put that skill to work for us, so we can avoid regret and prioritize our values. This is a great book to read if you’re feeling stuck or trying to make a major life decision. It’ll help you weigh the options and gain a different perspective on how you see yourself. Episode Links Changing the Narrative of Your Self How Do the Books We Read Change Our Brains? Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

Work relationships matter more than we think. They can be a key reason we stay in a job or the reason we leave. When they don’t go well, they can consume a lot of our time and energy, both in and out of work. That’s why we need to get better at them. Even the difficult ones, like a boss who takes all the credit or a co-worker who’s perpetually negative. Amy Gallo is an expert on conflict and a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review. In this interview, we discuss her most recent book, Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People). We talk about why work relationships are worth the time we invest, even when they’re challenging. In fact, it’s when they’re challenging that we need to work that much harder to overcome our most primal default settings. Amy shares a number of tools we can use to gain a different perspective, pressure test our assumptions, and respond so that we spend less time outside of work dealing with difficult people. And so we have more options than to give up or walk away. It’s a book I think you’ll return to again and again over the course of your career.  Episode Links 4 Tactics That Backfire When Dealing with a Difficult Colleague How to Navigate Conflict with a Coworker Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

What if becoming a better quitter was something to aspire to? Annie Duke thinks it is. She’s a national science foundation fellowship winner and bestselling author who’s used her background in psychology to become a successful poker player and business advisor. Lately, she’s spent time studying the power of quitting, a tool she argues is as important as grit, resilience, and sticking it out. The science shows we’re not great at it. We don’t fire quickly enough. We don’t quit soon enough. We don’t end relationships early enough. Why? Well, identity and goals play a role. Along with many of the messages our culture sends that err more on the side of stick it out than on the side of quit and try something else. Annie’s compelling book on the topic is titled, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. It’ll help you see how sticking with something that’s not working is just as much a decision as quitting. You’ll begin to view quitting as an important tool to add to your decision-making toolkit, especially when you understand better when to use it. Episode Links Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer To Change, or Not to Change? Just Flip a Coin Horse by Geraldine Brooks The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

What if the skills we need to thrive in uncertainty were ones we already had? That’s the case Jennifer Garvey Berger makes in her latest book, Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead. When life is good, we make time to connect, engage, and create. But when it’s uncertain, stress gets in the way of these healthy behaviors. While we can’t always change life’s complexity, we can counter its effects by tapping into healthy features of our biology. These include our breath, laughter, and social connections. This is a book to read with your colleagues, your teams, or all by yourself. It’ll help you take the first steps toward responding to uncertainty in healthier and happier ways. Episode Links The Expectation Effect by David Robson Quit by Annie Duke Akasha and Vernice Jones and Carolyn Coughlin Changing on the Job by Jennifer Garvey Berger Good Arguments by Bo Seo The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

Your manager sees it one way. Your colleague sees it another. Both ways are different from yours. Why is that? Well, our brains may have something to do with it. Today’s brain researchers are studying what makes our brains different. They’re finding that these differences not only impact how we interpret situations, but also how well we’re able to focus, learn new things, and adapt to change. They’re also discovering what motivates us and how well we connect with teammates. Chantel Prat is a neuroscientist who studies brain differences, and she’s written a book on the subject, The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain is Different and How to Understand Yours. In it, she explains how differences in brain design play out in work and in life. She helps us appreciate these differences and gain greater empathy for one another. Episode Links The Dress Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Wolcott Sperry and Simon Baron-Cohen Hebbian Theory PACE Model of Curiosity Theory of Mind Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

How we think about toughness needs a reset. Too often, it’s been associated with brute forcing our way through things. Ignoring our feelings. Making an outward show of confidence and dominance. The problem is it just doesn't work. Performance coach and bestselling author, Steve Magness, offers another way. He’s done a deep dive on the latest research on toughness and performance. In his book, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and The Surprising Science of Real Toughness, he discusses the misconceptions of our current model. Then he offers a new one informed by the latest in neuroscience and psychology research. Along the way, he translates research findings into practical steps we can take to make the shift. If you’re a performance junkie, you’ll gain a lot from this interview. You can also apply his ideas to managing your teams. If you enjoy Steve’s approach, check out my previous interview with him on finding your passion at work and in life, episode 142. Episode Links How to be More Resilient, According to an Elite Performance Coach The Secret to Developing Resilient Teams and Organizations Changing This 1 Word in Your Thoughts Can Boost Mental Toughness and Resilience, Psychologists Say Steven Callahan Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

What do you do when a promotion isn't an option? Maybe there aren’t enough positions to go around. It’s not the right moment in your career. Or maybe you don’t want the management responsibilities. In each case, you can feel stuck. But what if there were other options for career growth and development? That’s the case Julie Winkle Giulioni makes in her book, Promotions are So Yesterday: Redefine Career Development and Help Employees Thrive. In it, she shares seven areas for growth that leaders can develop in their organizations, teams, and individual employees. Julie’s insights offer a slate of new options to managers and individual contributors, each of which can have a positive impact on all areas of the organization. If you’re looking to meet employees where they are and modernize your organization in the process, Julie’s book is a terrific resource. Episode Links Multidimension Career Framework Psychological safety and Amy Edmonson The Inner Game of Career Development Defeat Disconnection with Development The Earned Life by Marshall Goldsmith The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

Is our cultural conditioning holding women back at work? We don’t often notice how we’re culturally conditioned. Like when we walk into a store and the girls’ toys are pink and boys’ toys are blue. It’s a gender norm we may not question.  Now you might ask, in the big scheme of things, how much do kids’ toy colors really matter? But what about actual behaviors, like when girls are playing together and they’re told to be quiet and play nice? Years later, these kinds of gender norms show up in the workplace. For example, men can be loud and openly ambitious, while women need to be warm and likeable. Yet, it’s these kinds of behaviors that can hold women back. The kind of body language and spoken language that got women the job may not get them promoted.  I invited Susannah Baldwin on the show because she’s spent decades studying the causes and effects of women’s cultural conditioning and its impact on their advancement in the workplace. In her book, Women, Language, and Power: Giving Voice to Our Ambition, she shines a light on how dominant a force this conditioning is. She also offers thoughtful guidance on how to overcome it. Whether you’re looking to understand the challenges for yourself or your team, you’ll find this book to be an incredible resource. Episode Links What Likeability Really Means in the Workplace Bem Sex-Role Inventory Let's Talk: Make Effective Feedback Your Superpower by Therese Huston Self-Promotion as a Risk Factor for Women: The Costs and Benefits of Counterstereotypical Impression Management Karin Martin gender researcher Persuasiveness of Confidence Expressed via Language and Body Language Anna Fels Executive Presence by Sylvia Ann Hewlett Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

There are times in our lives where we feel stuck, be it personally or professionally. It might be in our career. It might in a relationship. We’re smart, so we try to think our way out of it. But when we’re really stuck, thinking can turn into ruminating. And the more we think, the more we stay stuck. That’s when the labeling kicks in. The voice in our head labels us lazy, or crazy, or just plain unmotivated. Today’s guest, Britt Frank, is a licensed specialist clinical social worker (LSCSW). She’s written the book, The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia to Find your Path Forward. Britt’s the perfect person to teach us how thinking our way forward may not be the right tool for the job. In this interview, she explains how we get stuck and steps we can take to move through it. Episode Links Eustress vs Distress Cognitive behavioral therapy Brene Brown Peter Levine and somatic experiencing Carl Jung and the Shadow Side Bessel van der Kolk William Worden and the 4 Tasks of Grieving The Sun Valley Wellness Festival Do Hard Things by Steve Magness The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.

Most of us believe that if we're smart, work hard, and hit our targets, we've got what it takes to get promoted. And, in some organizations, we might be right. But, in many organizations, those skills only take us so far. Research shows that there's an additional set of skills, one we don't often discuss. Things like, strategic networking, political intelligence, and likeability. If you're like most people, these skills bring up a lot of strong emotions. You may even ask, why can't my work just speak for itself? Yet, if you think about who's gotten ahead at the places you've worked, you may start to see a pattern. That's what led Michael Wenderoth to write the book, Get Promoted: What You're Really Missing at Work That's Holding You Back. He noticed the gap between what we're often told to do to get ahead and what we actually need to do. This book is his attempt to fill that gap, and it's a much-needed resource for today's employee who's looking to get promoted. Episode Links Herminia Ibarra Power mapping For the Birds exhibit at Brooklyn Botanic Garden The Team Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here. Support the Podcast If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show. Subscribe Click here and then scroll down to see a sample of sites where you can subscribe.